Drunk, adj., Sakraan. Mabsout, slightly drunk. Mastoul, very drunk. Marraasi, n., a marisa [millet beer] drunkard.
-Sudanese Arabic: A Vocabulary, Sigmar Hillelson
Why save for poverty and wretchedness must we cross the desert of Atmour night after night?
-Bilal Bagheet, Khabeer, poetry recitation, Day 28 on the trail
Bilal was old and nearing his last ride up the Darb in 1988. KhairAllah had not seen him often since then but some twenty years later we tried to find either him, if he were by some miracle still alive, or his family when we went to the village where he was last known to live. No one in the souk knew anything about him, but because it was known for producing pure sesame oil, we bought some and I told KhairAllah to praise Bilal whenever his wife cooked with it.
Bilal had once gotten so drunk on marisa that he fell off his camel but at the time I did not laugh with the others and call him a marraasi, because I did not know that word then. I am glad that I did not because several days later he recited a very sad poem at the campfire about men’s hearts broken by girls and the poverty and wretchedness that afflicts all camel drovers. I only learned the words to his poem after reading the BBC translation almost a year later but I knew that it was sad when he recited it.
Looking now at Hillelson’s various words for Drunk, I see that he gives Mabsout to mean Slighty Drunk. In Egypt I learned that word to mean Happy. Lane gives it as, Free and Unconstrained in the Tongue…a better meaning for a poet reciting at the campfire, happy, drunk, neither or both.